Electronic components in general, such as bipolar transistors will not work at low temperatures, below about 70 K.
Complementary metal-oxide semiconductor, technology (CMOS) was originally developed for room-temperature low-power applications.
Although much domestic and commercial electronics operate at room temperature (300 K) there are an important and growing number of applications which require lower temperatures.
It has been known for some decades that metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) can operate at low-temperatures. For example, the integer quantum Hall effect was discovered by von Klitzing [4] in 1980, from the effects of an external magnetic field on the two-dimensional electron system (2DES) of a MOSFET at 4.2 K.
Additionally, there has been some reported work in characterizing silicon MOSFETs at temperatures ≦4.2 K, such as the demonstration of an operational amplifier fabricated by a commercial process which is was able to operate at 4.2 K [5]. Also there has been work done on modeling the behavior of MOSFETs in the sub-100 mK [6] and 4.2 K [7] temperature regions. There have been demonstrations of the operation of MOSFETs integrated with single-electron transistors (SETs) [8], [9] at 4.2 K, and other demonstrations of the effects of CMOS processing steps, namely using lightly-doped drains (LDDs) and Vt-adjust implantation, on the drain current kink effect of NMOS FETs at 4.2 K [10]. Others have integrated commercial CMOS processes with superconducting technologies [11-13], which has led them to characterize those MOSFETs at 4.2 K. However, it is quite commonly documented that MOSFET channels may freeze-out at cryogenic temperatures [11], [12] rendering them unsuitable for use for control of quantum circuits. Additionally, it is not usually practical to produce CMOS circuits of even modest complexity in a research laboratory; but only in a commercial foundry.